


Sálvalo

by 3amepiphany



Series: YOI Fic-A-Thon 2018 [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 04:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16654423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: They have a little time to wait while the jewelers' engrave the rings, and it's the perfect time to get in one last sight-seeing spot in the Gothic Quarter, and the perfect time to nonchalantly unravel, as one does when God is one's witness.





	Sálvalo

**Author's Note:**

> For Diandra, who requested a fairly open prompt based on "Bring Him Home" from Les Misérables. I didn't so much include the song here itself, which is mentioned in the title by its Spanish arrangement, as I did the general feeling of the song - having performed it in the past for competition the one thing I focused on as its play point was a search for and a finding of peace and hope for a good resolution in a moment of fear and of internal conflict. This isn't as great at conveying that as I feel it could have but I hope it's still enjoyable.
> 
> Considering it's an odd, precursory sort of conversation that only seems to be finished in the moment... I hope it's enjoyable.

Geese.

It was geese he could hear, softly - as if they were squabbling. And it totally pulled him out of the moment. The choir was one thing, but this was entirely another. He stood there, holding their bags while Yuuri tried to figure out if they should get dinner at that moment or if they should wait - the jewelers’ said they could come back before close to pick the rings up if they’d wanted them that evening, but they still had at least an hour of time to kill before then. If they went to dinner now they might risk not making it back to the store in time, and Yuuri was adamant about having the rings before his next skate. Victor contemplated the Cathedral silently, and wondered if it was still open to tourists. And if this was where the goose sounds was coming from. Either way, it was tempting to visit, and intruding were the geese, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Yuuri shift his expression a bit as he noticed that Victor seemed to be more staring into space than listening to him parse out the next portion of their evening.

“Are you alright?” Yuuri asked him. Victor fought a laugh, but he could certainly feel the corners of his lips twitch as the choir finished the piece they had been singing, and his calm, enamored smile fought to become an all-out grin.

“Shh,” he said, forcing out that laugh as a shushing sound as best as he could.

Yuuri waited a moment. Then there was a small cloud of fog that overtook his glasses as he exhaled through his nose. “You think I made a poor decision.”

“What? Yuuri, no. Listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“No, just. Listen, listen.”

And they stood there quietly for a moment. The choir began singing again, this time a hymn in latin, and Yuuri’s eyebrows slowly raised as far as they would go while he waited. Then they furrowed. “Well? ...Victor, please. What is it?”

“You don’t hear that?” Yuuri shook his head, and Victor laughed. He shouldn’t have, because now Yuuri stepped back a bit and gestured at the choir, and then at the Cathedral, and asked him if Victor was making fun of him for making too big a deal of their time. Victor apologized and started walking closer to the doors within the cloister, saying they ought to keep doing what they had been for most of the day, and that they could go eat after picking up the rings. There was a gift shop sign next to them on the wall that indicated that they had a little over a couple of hours before the gift shop and access to most of the walkable places of the cathedral were to close, and Victor motioned to him to go inside. He held the door open, and Yuuri shuffled in, face red and definitely telegraphing his embarrassment and likely frustration as well.

“What’s with all the geese?”

He heard Yuuri say quietly in Japanese as he stepped inside behind him. Or at least he’d caught most of it. He didn’t know the word for ‘geese’, but he realized that’s what Yuuri had said when the younger skater reached for a postcard that had a gaggle of geese depicted on it in watercolors, with the fountain on the other side of the cloister gate in the background. “I told you to listen closely while we were out there - I thought I heard geese and I was not wrong!”

They asked the first staff member that greeted them, and were regaled with an unsettling tale of why the cathedral kept thirteen geese on site. Their last feeding for the day would be soon if they’d like to go inside the cloister surrounding the courtyard and watch, and they were happy to wander about the shop until then when it was recommended that in the meantime they take in the rooftop view the cathedral provided if they didn’t mind the brisk air. Moments later, in the tiny elevator with a few other tourists, Yuuri took Victor’s hand in his, and placed both of them in his jacket pocket. He looked down at Yuuri with a big smile, and his stomach flip-flopped a bit. It wasn’t from the elevator. It was the feelings he’d started to worry about in the jewelry store finally welling up within him. No, more like since Yuuri had gotten back from Moscow. They needed to talk.

“You know, Yuuri,” Victor told him as they approached the railing that allowed them to look out over the Gothic Quarter and the festival and market that lit up the square and streets leading out from it. “The depths of my faith in you are eternal. It’s the faith I have in myself as your coach that wavers now and then.”

“I have a hard time believing that.”

“I’m allowed to climb down from the pedestal you put me upon.”

“You’ve seen me at my worst so many times. In competition, in private.”

“Yes, and? You’ve also seen me at my worst.”

“I have not. What are you talking about?”

He looked at Yuuri very earnestly in his confusion and he wanted to ask, how could he not consider his past comments to Yuuri horrible? About his weight, about his skills, about his expectations, about how Katsuki Yuuri was terrible with other people who looked up to him, when it was _he_ , Victor Nikiforov, that had crushed his heart like a little glass trinket. He thought about that moment when he was finally certain that this was what he needed to be for Yuuri - that support. The pedestal under him. Believe in me, Yuuri had said, but then days later, running to greet him at the airport, Victor realized no, that wasn’t it either. It was being with him that was important and necessary first and foremost, but that in itself was everything he was working towards, and not just in being his coach - it was in getting Yuuri to take his hand to raise him up, to show him he deserved to be on that pedestal with Victor as a competitor, as a lover. That they could be on that pedestal together because of one another. Or well, more realistically, no pedestals. Get rid of those entirely. Why did those even have to be a thing? Just more expectations. He was so tired of expectations. Yuuri had to be tired of them too.

“Okay. The view is lovely, but it’s still lonely and very boring up there. I’d rather have some company. But how to convince you that you should join me? I want to save you from your self-doubt so much but is it more for you or for my own benefit? It’s terrible, this thinking. I’ve been alone for far too long and this is what comes of it. You know, of course I want you to succeed. Of course I want that for you and it’s why I’m coaching you. It’s my job - to make you feel confident in yourself. But is it enough? Am I capable of doing it? Of convincing you…? And how inspiring will I be to you if I fail? If I fail you and myself?”

“You think all these things. Truthfully?”

“True to myself as I can be in this moment,” Victor told him. And it’s selfish, he didn’t say aloud. All of it, selfish. 

“Well,” Yuuri said. “Not to sound dismissive but I think you’ve forgotten just how much passive effort you’ve already put in as my inspiration before you showed up to coach me.”

Which was a fair point.

After a moment, Yuuri added, “And maybe that’s it. There’s an expectation there where there wasn’t before and I think we’re both trying to forcibly overshoot it.”

They stood there quietly for some time before Yuuri pulled his hand away so he could take his phone out; Victor patiently leaned against the railing on his own while Yuuri made it obvious that he was taking photos of him. Then there were a few minutes where they took some selfies overlooking the Quarter, and Victor exchanged help with nearby tourists to take some wider shots that weren’t from selfie angles. They went back down in the elevator, and watched the geese wandering about eating in the courtyard, and once back in the gift shop, Yuuri disappeared to run back to the jeweler’s while Victor waited in line to purchase some goose-related souvenirs they’d chosen for the Katsukis.

“Show me the skating that you liked best,” Victor heard himself say a short while later. A good middle ground for him on the matter for the evening - he could go into the next couple of days knowing that he had done everything he was able to, and that a failure of any sorts wasn’t by any means a sign that he wasn’t cut out to be a coach. Especially his first time doing so. And especially doing so as Yuuri’s coach! He was happy that he’d instilled enough confidence in Yuuri that he would fight so hard for his programs, and what he wanted from them, and to be able to define his success on his own terms however he came by it. Forget everyone else’s expectations - it just needed to be enough for the two of them. Because it was the two them now, for certain.

There was a soft honk somewhere behind them as the choir near the entrance to the cloister ended another hymn. Yuuri heard it too, and gave Victor a smile that would have kept him sated for the rest of his life if he didn’t need actual food to survive.

As they wandered through the festive market for a meal, he wondered who would notice their new accessories and just how much mileage he could get out of joking about getting married after Yuuri’s Grand Prix win between now and the next couple of days, and was extremely pleased to see Mari and Minako up ahead of them. They would be the first to help him find out.


End file.
